'''Eldrick "Tiger" Woods''' (born December 30, 1975) is an American golfer whose achievements rank him among the most successful golfers of all time. Woods is currently the highest paid athlete in the world, having earned an estimated $87 million in 2005.
[http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/16/cx_lr_0317bestpaidathletes_25.html?thisSpeed=6000?forwardName=cx_lr_0317bestpaidathletes|Best Paid Athletes Highest paid Athletes, retreived August 24th, 2006] In 2006, at the age of 30, he won his 11th and 12th professional major golf championships
[ His most recent placed him second on the list of victories in professional majors, behind only Jack Nicklaus. However because both the professional and amateur versions of the US Open and British Open were considered majors in the era of Bobby Jones (who won 6 total amateur titles in addition to his 7 professional major victories) while the amateurs are not generally considered majors in the modern era http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/10/AR2005081001723.html, owing to the fact that most of the best players in Jones's day were amateurs http://www.thegolfchannel.com/core.aspx?page=5005&select=185 and that the Masters was not in existence before Jones's retirement in 1930 (Jones co-founded the Masters in 1934) http://www.masters.org/en_US/history/index.html, it is generally recognized that Bobby Jones won 13 majors http://www.thegolfchannel.com/core.aspx?page=5005&select=185, that Nicklaus won 18 majors http://mediacentre.rbs.com/advertising/usa-advertising/tv-advertising/jack-nicklaus-majors/index.aspx, and that Woods has won 12 majors. ] and has more wins on the PGA Tour than any other active golfer. He is the only active golfer currently in the top 10 in career major wins.
Woods, who is multiracial, is credited with prompting a major surge of interest in the game of golf among minorities and young people in the United States.
Background and family
Woods's father, Earl Woods, was a Vietnam War veteran and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, of mixed African American (50 percent), Chinese (25 percent) and Native American (25 percent) ancestry. He was the chairman of his son's charitable foundation, the Tiger Woods Foundation, before his death at age 74 on May 3, 2006, following a lengthy battle with prostate cancer (see section charity and youth projects below). Woods' mother, Kultida Woods, is originally from Thailand, and is of mixed Thai (50 percent), Chinese (25 percent), and Dutch (25 percent) ancestry. This makes Woods himself one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter African, one-eighth Native American, and one-eighth Dutch.
He refers to his ethnic make-up as Cablinasian (a portmanteau of '''Ca'''ucasian, '''Bl'''ack, American-'''In'''dian, and '''Asian'''), a term he made up himself.
Born Eldrick Woods in Cypress, California, he was nicknamed “Tiger” after Vuong Dang Phong, a friend of his father’s. Woods became generally known by that name and by the time he had achieved national prominence in junior and amateur golf was simply known as "Tiger Woods." He grew up in the Los Angeles area,
